Unpaid carers - right to breaks and timescales for support plans: consultation analysis

Background

There are an estimated 700,000 to 800,000 adult unpaid carers. The latest estimates^[1] are around 722,000 unpaid carers including 23,000 young carers (under 18). It is crucial that carers are supported to have a life alongside caring, and that they are able to sustain and improve their own health and wellbeing.

Through the Care Reform (Scotland) Act 2025, the Scottish Government will establish a right to breaks from caring to support people to protect their wellbeing and sustain caring relationships. The provisions within the 2025 Act make changes to the Carers (Scotland) Act 2016 to deliver a right to personalised short breaks support for carers who can’t currently access “sufficient breaks” from caring.

This consultation was designed to help understand the views of carers and others on key issues to be set in regulations and guidance, and what these might mean to people in relation to their experience of providing or receiving unpaid care. We will use the answers to inform the new regulations and guidance which are needed to make sure the right to breaks is delivered effectively and consistently.

The consultation options were developed with input from the Regulations and Guidance Working Group and the Right to Breaks Steering Group. These are made up of unpaid carers, carer support organisations, carer centre managers, the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities (COSLA) and statutory organisations including local authorities, health and social care, finance and social work.

Alongside the written consultation, we held in-person engagement sessions at the 2025 National Care Service Forum; and separate sessions with groups of carers whose views can often be under-represented, including minority ethnic carers and young carers.

This consultation sought views on the following issues:

• The definition of the key term, “sufficient breaks”
• Types of breaks that should be in scope
• Timescales for preparing adult carer support plans and young carer statements
• Transitional arrangements from the current system to the new right to breaks.

The written consultation ran from Friday 27 February until Friday 22 May 2026.

You may wish to view the consultation paper and the Easy Read version of the paper.